For, the district administration of Latehar, which had constructed it on behalf of the tourism department, has given up its reluctance of three years and is now ready to hand over the plaza for the benefit of state tourism.

"We plan to begin using the tourist plaza early next month," said Arun Kumar Singh, secretary of the state tourism department. To begin with, the state plans to convert the plaza into a one-stop spot for adventure tourism with various activities including hot air ballooning.

It's not clear why the handover took so long. One theory, according to sources, is that the tourism department wasn't happy with the finished product and hence wasn't keen to take it over. But both parties deny this.

In the absence of an engineering cell, the tourism department had asked the district administration to build the plaza. It was ready in 2005, built on a one-acre plot at an approximate cost of Rs 2 crore. But for the last three years, it remained unused with both the Latehar administration and the tourism department showing no willingness to move ahead. In fact, the district administration even floated an open tender on July 25 this year to rent out the structure to private entities. But it had to cancel the tender abruptly three days later after the intervention of the tourism department, which reminded the administration that the property belonged to it.